The Preferred Hour
by uselessenglishmajor
Summary: Draco Malfoy has not been seen in public since the death of his wife. When her daughter is invited to visit his mysterious home by the young Malfoy heir, the struggling Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger, finds that her curiosity is piqued. HG/DM, SM/RW. Cursed Child-inspired but not compliant. Ron fans beware.


A/N: I have never been part of or written for the HP fandom before. However, I recently discovered some quite incredible pieces of Dramione fic and have fallen into a deep, dark hole of which I am struggling to get out. Which has led to this epically long mess of a oneshot. Please excuse any canonical errors. And don't read if you like Ron. Try as I might, I wasn't very nice to him.

* * *

Malfoy Manor is home to only ghosts. If you can make it past the warded gates (and you won't unless you carry their cursed blood in your veins) and up the long winding drive to the large impressive doors and be let through by an old and loyal house elf, you will find no other living soul. The hallway is a cold, marble cavern with only statues to greet you. Turn right into the East wing, residence of the former master and his mistress, and you may speak with their austere, imposing portraits. You may hear the echo of their footsteps behind the closed (never opened) door of the forgotten drawing room. Hear the whisper of lost conversations, the dying embers of screams.

No one goes into the East wing and so let us turn left. Start with the artery of the grand staircase that bifurcates into each heart of this forsaken palace. The bedrooms of the West wing are well-kept, dusted and clean. Mausoleums to their inhabitants. A child's room in silver and green, filled with storybooks and quidditch memorabilia. A nursery too with a cradle that has rocked to sleep generations of Malfoy heirs; the charmed mobile still turns, hung with stars and moons. It is painted in rose pink for there had been the brief hope that there would be a break from the monotony of lone male descendants (but this was not meant to be).

If you make it as far as the current master's chambers, you will be startled by its lightness. Cream walls and delicate muslin drapes and unwrinkled white linen stretched taut over the lovingly made four-poster bed. It might feel warm and inviting, but nobody sleeps here. Only stands and drinks in the sights and breathes in the smells and remembers. Even here, where tragedy sticks to the bricks like mortar, glimpses of happiness remain.

The ghosts are mostly shy. You will not find a familiar face beyond the painted kind. And kind is the visage of the mistress who watches from her lonely seat. Come further, into the dungeons, where no prisoners are locked here now. There is not a prisoner but a hostage of his own choosing, trapped by fate and circumstance and terrifying belief. In what were cells are shelves of artifacts, vials and jars of ingredients, cauldrons and ladles and knives and others tools, and books in extinct languages, dead tongues of forbidden verse. There are workbenches and a cot and a hard-backed chair. There is a room that is bare save for the notes that line every wall. Some are etched into the stone, while most are cast upon parchment, ink scrawled in a meticulous if frantic script so that the paper is scratched and blots are scattered like the many wild and desperately written notions. A room of words, but nobody speaks.

The only ghost you will see slowly paces.

He stops, and he thinks.

Perhaps you should leave him to his thoughts. For the rest of the world—bar one dedicated visitor—knows that the ghosts of Malfoy Manor are best left well alone.

* * *

"Is it okay, mum?"

"I'll have to speak with your father."

"Please don't!"

"Rose—"

"You know what he'll say. He doesn't like me being with him as it is. I've asked him to meet us and he always makes these lame excuses then says we shouldn't be together and all these other awful things that have nothing to do with anything. It's like he doesn't want me to be happy."

"You know that isn't true."

"I'm almost sixteen, mum. I know I'm not a grown-up yet, but I have my own mind, I can make my own decisions. You guys were practically fighting a war at my age. I just want to be with the boy I love."

Hermione sighs. "I don't have a problem with it."

"I know that."

"And I suppose what your dad doesn't know won't hurt him."

"Yes!"

"But there are rules."

"Okay…"

"You will owl me every day. And I want to know that his father consents to this."

"You could just ask him, you know."

She doesn't say anything to this and sees her daughter roll her eyes in a way that is far too familiar.

"He's quiet, but he's not scary. I don't get what the big deal is."

You don't know what I know, Hermione thinks, but I don't want to burden you with that. "Those are my conditions, Rose Weasley."

"Fine. Just cos you're Minister, no need to treat it like some negotiation."

"Watch your tone."

"I'm sorry."

"You're forgiven."

"I love you, mum."

"I love you, too."

"Speak to you later!"

"Be safe!"

A cloud of red curls retreats amongst the flames, and Hermione watches as the floo call ends.

* * *

The house is quiet when she returns. It is always quiet these days. So quiet that it feels as if she haunts her own home. There are traces of her family everywhere. Ron's muddy quidditch boots in the porch. Muggle comic books belonging to Hugo shoved amongst a pile of old _Daily Prophet_ issues. A lost hairband of Rose's, telltale strands twisted about the black elastic. Mundane and inconsequential yet living, breathing reminders.

Hermione slips off her shoes, sensible and ugly in black leather with a conservative two-inch heel. She places her stack of parchments down on a side table, along with her wand and keys. She smiles as Crookshanks hobbles into view, ancient and gray-flecked. He manages a lowly purr as he rubs his head against her ankles. She crouches down and scratches behind an ear.

"You miss me, don't you?"

Her familiar gives an all-too familiar glare, unimpressed, before hobbling back towards the kitchen in the expectation of food.

Hermione obliges. She clears up the remnants of her breakfast too, a cup of cold tea and a slice of buttered toast with two pitiful bites taken out of one corner. She abides by the ritual of making meals but struggles to follow through with the eating. All the gestures are hollow. Her heart is not in it, though her body makes all the right moves and she knows the right things to say and do. She can still function as Minister, but it feels like her other important roles are dwindling. Who needs her? Does the rest of the Wizarding World even do?

She pours a glass of wine and tries to banish such thoughts. Sits at the kitchen table and absorbs the silence. This is good. No more yelling. No more fighting a war she will lose. This is what her marriage has become. And Ron has retreated, a ceasefire called between them both. They will not tell the children yet, not until the final accords have been agreed. Does that mean divorce? She does not know.

Politics infects almost all her decisions and interactions and thoughts. She takes her work home and she makes her home work and she lives this life as a role she was cast in far too young to decide what the longterm consequences would be. Nothing ever seems in her control, though she works hard to give the appearance of it.

 _I just want to be with the boy I love._

I wanted that too, she thinks, as if that was all there could ever be in the world. All that would matter and make it turn. But it turns on its own, whatever you do. And you follow like a treadmill. And your heart aches and it yearns and no one pays it any mind. The world always turns and the heartbreak's forgotten. It's never seen, never spoken of. The Minister of Magic still does her job. Hermione Granger married Ron Weasley and is mother to two children and that is all anyone needs to know.

Weren't you something else first, she thinks. Didn't you mean to be something more?

The wine is gone with the daylight. Hermione walks in the dark up the stairs to the bathroom. She lights candles with a wandless and wordless incantation. Strips off her clothes and catches her too-thin figure in the mirror's glass. Bath filled, she sinks into the water, closes her eyes and lets the tears come. It is another hollow ritual. Like fingering the tangles from her curls. Like running a hand between her legs in a poor imitation of a lover. She cries but since there is no one around to see or hear it then she can convince herself later that it never happened at all.

* * *

"There's an owl for you, Minister."

She is in the office on a Saturday. Of course there are no fixed hours to the responsibilities of her position. It is a convenient excuse. Her aides use the excuse too, workaholics like herself; it is why she handpicked them to surround her. Delegation is hard and learning to trust even harder. The selection process was a long and challenging one.

"Let them in," she says, expecting a letter from Rose. Her assistant, a stoic Ravenclaw named Giles, goes to the window, and a large eagle owl swoops in. This is not the bird she was expecting.

"Should I fetch an auror?" Giles says. He was not chosen for his stoicism but an unnatural perceptiveness that Hermione treasures dearly. Except in this moment.

"It's okay. I'll call if there's a problem."

He leaves with a slight nod, and Hermione watches the owl as it struts across her desk, a proud and preening creature. She reaches into a top drawer for a treat and holds it out. The bird tilts its head. It stares unblinking as Hermione stares back, unblinking too. Then with a squawk it snatches the morsel from her hand.

"Wicked thing," she says with a smile. She's surprisingly charmed by its antics, untying the scroll from an intimidatingly taloned foot. The owl almost purrs like Crookshanks when she scratches a pointed ear. "Where did you come from, hm?"

She gets her answer when she unfurls the parchment.

 _Minister Granger—_

Ron never liked that she kept her maiden name in a professional capacity. Never mind that both their children bear the Weasley moniker, as well as its signature red hair. It is still another way she has castrated him in the infinitely more painful metaphorical sense. Small business owner (and failed auror) cannot compete with elected leader of the Wizarding World, just as above average intellect cannot make peace with the Brightest Witch of their Age.

(Yet there are things he has made her feel insecure about too.)

 _Rose has arrived safely at the Manor. She informed me that you wished for my consent on her visit. Allow me to reassure you, we are delighted and exceedingly grateful for her company. Should you wish to confirm her well-being, my doors are open to you and Rose's father at any time. Please owl ahead so I may make the necessary preparations for the preferred hour._

 _Yours,_

 _Draco Malfoy_

Rose's father. Not her husband. Does the distinction matter? Why this is her initial thought, Hermione does not dwell on. She moves onto the next: it is the first contact made in three years by her elusive (or reclusive?) former classmate. The last public outing had been at his late wife's funeral. Hermione was there, along with Rose and Hugo (Ron claimed George needed him to go to Europe for supplies). The Greengrass family as well and a few other pureblood representatives, a smattering of dignitaries and even the French Wizarding Head of State. The ceremony had been held on the grounds of Malfoy Manor. Security had been tight, led by Harry in his role as Head Auror. He was by Hermione's side as she held Rose's hand, the girl's cries the only sound audible above the rain. In the Wizarding World, it always rained at funerals, though with waterproofing and umbrella charms, the weather was only for effect.

She remembered seeing Malfoy stand with his son, his face a cold silver mask that matched his hair. He looked like his father then, she thought, as tall and imposing as Lucius, as remote and unreadable too. Scorpius by comparison appeared small and silently tearful, a flawed facsimile of the older two scions. Mother gone and a father who would or could not comfort him. The funeral pyre was lit and a few words said by the French Minister (and in latin to boot). Hermione looked through the flames, but Malfoy's mask did not move. Only his hand, which lifted to press onto Scorpius' shoulder. A single touch and the young boy's wail broke through the noise of fire and rain.

No one has seen or heard from Draco Malfoy since.

Hermione is curious. She cannot help to be. Rose befriended Scorpius at some point during their second year at Hogwarts, and his mother passed away not long after that. With time their friendship grew, and her daughter wrote a letter to she and Ron explaining in clear, precocious terms that they were dating and he made her happy and the only way she could be happier was if her dear parents could be happy for her. Ron was outraged. Hermione intercepted his howler from ever making it to the school in what was perhaps an abuse of ministerial privileges. But it did not matter. Her children's happiness would always come above everything else.

She met Rose and Scorpius plus Albus Potter in Hogsmeade. The next generation certainly would not repeat the history of their parents. Albus had been sorted into Slytherin with Scorpius and they were said to be best friends, if both outsiders (and to the great disappointment of the great Harry Potter). Rose was a Gryffindor, but apparently inter-house rivalry was not what it once was. "We're a trio," Rose explained. "The Silver Trio," Albus quipped. Us against the world, or something along those lines. Hermione remembers when she had felt the same.

Scorpius was polite and well-mannered during that first meeting, holding doors and holding out chairs for both mother and daughter. He listened and answered thoughtfully when spoken to, unlike Hermione's wayward nephew, who looked like he wished to be anywhere else. Rose just looked ecstatic, but Hermione was secretly unnerved. Though the younger Malfoy was a physical clone of his father, it was like witnessing what Draco might have been if brought up free of all prejudice and familial expectations. It made her heart break, just a little.

Quill poised to paper, Hermione studies the Malfoy owl and wonders what the necessary preparations might be as she decides what constitutes the most preferred hour.

* * *

She does not tell Ron where Rose is going and only tells Harry as head of her security provision where she will be spending a rare work-free Sunday.

Harry is sworn to confidentiality. He is also extremely displeased.

"You knew they were dating; what did you expect?" she says.

"Not to be put in this position," he grumbles.

"Would you rather I leave her there all weekend than not check up on her?"

"You just love to put me in these impossible situations, Hermione. Did you tell Malfoy there'll be an auror detail accompanying you?"

"Yes. He said he expected no less."

Harry snorts. "Course he did."

"You're not the same bit curious that I am?"

"I've never been as curious as you. Suspicious, maybe. And wary. If he's kept to himself, then why bother him?"

"He's been alone in that place for the last three years. Scorpius is a good kid. He must have done something right."

"All his wife, I'm sure."

"You've met him, haven't you? Scorpius, I mean."

Here Harry's expression turns sheepish. "No."

"Harry! He's your son's best friend. You have to let this go."

"Let what go? Me and Albus… Scorpius Malfoy is the least of our problems."

"He still won't speak to you?"

"Oh he speaks. In lots of colorful words. You don't know how lucky you are to have children like Rose and Hugo."

"He's your son."

"But he's different than me. I know, I know… I never expected him to be the same, but I guess I wasn't prepared for…" He shrugs. "It's the biggest minefield there is, having kids. I love him more than I ever thought I'd love anything; I'd die for him in an instant, but I don't know if I'll ever understand him."

"Scorpius is nothing like Malfoy."

"So?"

"He never gave the impression that they don't get along."

"I'm not taking parenting advice based off of Draco bloody Malfoy!"

"Sorry, Harry." Hermione grins while patting his cheek. "I'll make sure to tell him that you send your regards."

* * *

Hermione and her six-strong auror guard apparate outside the gates of Malfoy Manor at the preferred hour of three o'clock. Afternoon tea to be served on the terrace, she was informed via her new eagle owl associate; obviously the necessary preparations are afoot.

Waiting for the gates to open, her first welcome arrives with the excited voice of Rose.

"You came!"

Her daughter rushes down wide stone steps and along the gravel drive as the gates begin to slowly part. Her hair is wilder than Hermione's, having rarely been cut since she was a small girl. Now it reaches her lower back (and to mid thigh when wet). She's a Pre-Raphaelite painting brought to life, Hermione thinks. Pale freckled skin and large brown eyes and wearing a loose shift dress in tartan print that stops at her knees. How did Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley create something so beautiful? Her gorgeous girl, in body and heart and spirit.

That is until Rose reaches them. "Ugh! Did Uncle Harry insist on the babysitters?"

The aurors remain professionally unmoved, but Hermione folds her arm and raises an eyebrow. "You know the deal. And Mr. Malfoy does too."

"It's okay, Rose." Scorpius has caught up with her. Dressed in sneakers, slacks and a Slytherin quidditch jersey, he's taller than since Hermione last saw him, much taller now than she and Rose, though he still carries the gangly awkwardness of youth. "Dad's cool," he says, "He's used to it."

"Since when?" Rose stares at him, confused, and Hermione catches his eye, minutely shaking her head. Lucky for her and true to his house, he doesn't miss a beat.

"Ages ago. Whatever. Let's go inside." He steps forward and offers Hermione his arm. "Good to see you again, Minister."

"Hermione, please."

"Hermione Please."

That charm is all his father, Hermione supposes and laughs as she accepts Scorpius' arm, Rose punching him in the other before threading her fingers through his hand.

They walk in procession with the aurors flanking them. The day is warm and bright for late September, the manor a non-threatening anemic gray against the sun. Nothing to be intimidated by. Hermione has been here since the war for Astoria Malfoy's funeral, but she has not been inside. Not since during the war itself. The realization hits. You have six highly trained witches and wizards beside you, she thinks. You're the Minister of Magic and powerful in your own right. Draco Malfoy has a son and has taken in your daughter. What can he do to you? What would he even wish to now?

As she climbs the steps and sees her host standing in the doorway, she finds answers that she did not seek.

He is tall, yes. A slender frame but with strong shoulders. He wears formal robes of charcoal that are fitted to emphasize his lithe shape. Always a seeker by physique, does he still play? Does he fly at least? His hair looks mussed by wind or maybe hands; she can recognize the telltale signs of unconscious toying in the dark locks of Harry. But Harry's hair is thick and curly. Malfoy's is straight and pale as ever. It falls over his eyes, though looks neatly kept at the back. Scorpius' hair is cut similarly and she wonders if it is in sweet emulation or maybe the only style that their anonymous barber knows. But enough about his hair. For his face is watching and it is not the cold silver mask of his wife's funeral day. Gray eyes or maybe a washed out blue; she could never decide for gray eyes seemed such an unnatural color. But there are so many shades about them. Lines about them too. Did he laugh a lot or is it all age? Too much frowning? His forehead is smooth. His nose is long and fine and his cheekbones high and sculpted, having inherited the enviable bone structure of his mother. His mouth though. Is that a smile or a smirk? The curve to his thin lips is so subtle. Hermione blinks.

"Mum, what are you staring at?"

"Minister Granger," Draco Malfoy says, and Hermione is suddenly eleven years old.

* * *

The view from the rear terrace is spectacular. Hermione can only recall a waterlogged hill beneath equally waterlogged clouds as making up the grounds on her last visit. But the gardens she sees now are all vibrant reds and greens, autumn hinting in ripe berries, the promise of winter held in gold-edged leaves that rustle with the breeze.

She sips her coffee and listens to the voices of their children. Rose and Scorpius are riding brooms in overlapping circles. Scorpius is a chaser for the Slytherin team. Rose refuses to play quidditch but has been flying since the age of five at the behest of her father. Hermione has always been grateful to Ron that he did not permit their children to have her own irrational aversion. Still, she feels unsettled to watch as Scorpius dives down low and fast. He pulls up only as legs brush the top of trees, while Rose calls him a boring showoff. Boring is not the word Hermione would use.

"He's worse than the peacocks," Malfoy says dryly, eyes narrowed above his cup and saucer of tea.

"At least they're having fun."

"You still hate it, don't you?"

"What?"

"Flying. Brooms. Quidditch. A triumvirate of Granger abhorrence."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"Humor me, please. It is strangely reassuring to think that after all this time certain things cannot change."

Things have changed though, she thinks. Look at me. "I tried but it's still patently unnatural and highly dangerous to go about on those things."

He huffs a small breath through his nose. She guesses that it's close enough to a laugh from him. "What does your husband think? He never once tried to change your mind?"

"Early on but he gave up pretty easily. I'm a lost cause when it comes to this."

"And yet a champion of lost causes."

He puts his cup down as she studies him. Their conversation has gone from formal to awkward to non-existent and now thawing yet oddly stilted. It's so hard to know what to say. She made brief comment about his wife at the start, offered obligatory yet pointless condolences and saw the funeral mask slip back in place for a while. He asked after Ron out of the same obligatory yet pointless politeness and she was equally terse. No more talk about spouses then. But when it came to the children, the tension broke.

Though he's not forthcoming in affection or praise towards his son, he is not overtly disapproving in the way she imagines Lucius would have been (in the way a part of her instinctively reacted until she met Scorpius for herself). A half-blood with a pureblood prince would have drawn at least half the consternation of a Muggle-born match in bygone days; she supposes that this indicates progress, if she were truly inclined to be so generous. More stingily, perhaps the burden of emotional nurturing fell to the now tragically dead mother.

Conversely, he is cautiously (and uncharacteristically) kind to Rose and she appears enamored by him, calling him Draco with a delicate blush that matches her namesake. Hermione has not yet said his name. There is too much intimacy in the gesture and the underserved subtext of forgiveness. And after she insisted on dropping the ministerial form of address, he took the more prudent course of action, falling back into calling her Granger.

However, the most awkward moment after the spouses exchange came when Malfoy called on his house elf. A markedly geriatric specimen named Artie appeared, wearing a knitted tie and vest. He served them on the veranda and Malfoy looked Hermione's way, clearly trying to gauge her reaction. It almost felt like a taunt and she said nothing, thanking the elf until he apparated away.

"Artie," Malfoy says and the elf appears once more.

"What is it yous be needing, Master?"

"Take a seat."

The elderly elf does, pulling himself with great effort onto the chair closest to Hermione.

"Do you know who this is?" Malfoy says.

"I's not been seeings many ladies comes this way, Master."

"That's true. She's the Minister of Magic," Malfoy says. "And before she was elected, she pushed through all the legislation that made you a free house elf."

Artie stares at her, almost squinting. "It was you? Lets me be thanking you kindly, brave mistress. I's always been proud to serve the Malfoy family here since Master Abraxus was a lad. I's nots be leaving but friends did and I is happy for them. Tis a great day for the house elves when you make us free."

"Would you like tea and cake?" Malfoy is saying but Hermione can only stare at Artie. She wants to take his hand. She wants to hug him. She wants to ensure that this is not a cynical ploy by his master to win her hard-earned favor.

"Cream and six sugars," Artie replies and Malfoy obliges, stirring each lump in.

"Granger, is it possible for house elves to develop diabetes? I've been warning Artie of this. It took me great pains to wean him down from eight sugars to a meager six."

" _You_ serve him tea?"

"With cream and six sugars," Artie says. "It's not my liking but the Master says and so I must dos my best to please him."

"You please me very well," Malfoy says as he hands the cup over. "If you'll excuse us. And do go easy on the cake." He offers Hermione his arm. "Would you like to see the library?"

* * *

They are accompanied by three aurors as they make their way upstairs. Hermione is calm as long as she does not picture the drawing room where Bellatrix carved her shame into her flesh. She's not fully sure where it even is. Everything looks different in the light, without fear, without torture. And Malfoy is solid against her hand. She can feel the hard swell of his bicep, the warm skin seeping through his robes. She is calmed by the imagination of his heartbeat, a steady percussion that bleeds life into all the darkest places. This house lives because of him and maybe what he is keeping alive is not the traditions of the past but something evolved, painfully healed and stronger for it. She might hold onto his left arm, close to his mark, but does it shame him anymore than hers did? She does not blame him as staunchly as her younger self once did. For her curiosity is piqued now. He is an unread mystery novel, an untapped well of surprises, an undisturbed lake of hidden depths. Three years cut off from society and she wonders if she will be the one who gets to read, to taste, to swim.

She is out of control, she thinks. This curiosity will kill her. And they have not even reached the library. It looms behind tall doors at the point where the stairway breaks into east and west halves. Malfoy opens said doors without his wand or his hands. They part like the entrance to a fairground ride, and candles steadily take flame as they enter. Hermione gasps. Malfoy carefully extracts her hand from his sleeve.

"A predictable reaction. Still, I wanted to see." He gestures with an arm that she can explore. "Take your time."

You did this on purpose, she thinks. Slimy Slytherin. Of course a library is all it would take for her to plunge right in.

The smell is the first thing that hits her. All books have a scent, dependent on age and thickness and how thoroughly they have been read. The aroma here is reminiscent of Hogwarts and yet wholly different, for a unique collection of books resides in this place. And there is something else, something of the Malfoy essence, whatever that is. He must spend a lot of time here; who wouldn't? (Ron, she thinks then just as quickly extinguishes the thought.)

The shelves are inbuilt, lining and forming walls to create a maze of many ways in and out. The large picture windows that overlook the gardens each have reading seats set beneath them, all topped with a generous array of cushions. What would her favorite one be? The preferred spot at the preferred hour. Or what about the sofas or that desk beside a fire? Why not build a bed and let her live here? Mentally, she slaps herself. Already she's ten steps beyond what is her usual sense of good reason.

She studies the titles, finds them arranged by subject and date, a method of organization that stokes an indecent warmth in her gut. There is even an index cabinet. She could be the Malfoy librarian if the role was needed. She is losing her mind. She is drunk by her own unique pleasure.

I am so easy to seduce. With written words on scented pages tightly bound in leather. Forget my body and take my mind. Ravish me intellectually. It has been a long time. (Was there ever really an occasion?)

She could slap herself for real this instant. She probably should. She sits down on a randomly selected chaise longue, browsing a tome on potion-making in Mesopotamia. I love you, she thinks, pressing her fingers to her lips and then down upon a page. I am in love with this book.

And all the others. Reading is not a monogamous affair. You have to be a slut for it. She is as promiscuous as they come. She thinks about her lonely bath tonight and knows she will recall this moment.

"Granger." Malfoy clears his throat. "The children are waiting. I can offer you a light supper before you leave."

"Oh," she says, blushing as she rises. "How long have I been here?"

"Long enough," he says and draws closer as he whispers, "Your bodyguards had grown quite concerned by the sound of moans."

"I was not moaning!"

"No. But if you did, I fully understand."

A smile seems discernible in the crinkling of lines around his eyes. His gentle teasing is unexpected; it excites her. Enough that she recklessly responds, "A kindred spirit then?"

"Those are very rare things indeed," he says and any hint of a smile is gone, his voice now quietly grave.

* * *

Harry is the only one who knows about her separation from Ron, the loyal if disgruntled keeper of her secrets.

Separation is too strong a word, she thinks. They do not live together, which means they are together separately. Still married. Still a united front in public, committed parents to both their children.

She's not thinking about him when he shows up at her office door.

It's Monday and not respectably lunchtime yet and her mind isn't focused on the tasks at hand. She's distracted by memories of libraries and free house elves who drink sweet tea and tall silver mysteries of men, of a man who is not the one she is together separately with.

When the door opens with no knock, she is startled, as if caught in the act of betrayal. She could have blushed just as much if she had been laid out across her desk with legs spread and her skirt pushed up. The thought conjures another image of long pale hands with strong fingers—a concert pianist, he could have been—caressing her thighs as a head of white blond hair dips between them.

"Am I interrupting, 'Mione?"

Ron enters anyway. He notices the ink she just spilled but says nothing, sitting a paper bag atop her desk.

"Brought lunch from that place you like," he says instead, taking a seat before her. "You've still not been eating, I can tell."

He regards her as she regards him, both searching for evidence of the toll their time apart has taken. Ron looks unkempt but no more than usual. His hair is too long for his age and scattered with gray like the fur of Crookshanks. His face is soft with gained weight like he stole all the extra pounds from her, and she's caught between disappointed and pleased that he hasn't shaved. In this moment, Hermione struggles to recall when she last found him attractive. It's a cruel thought, but one of many. And she wonders what it is that he sees.

It's no secret that she has lost weight from skipping meals, but it has not been down solely to a failing marriage. Her eating habits are haphazard at best since becoming Minister. Ron was the first to observe, to make the point that she was too skinny. He could not get it up for—and those were his words—a bird with no flesh on her bones. He often mistakes his vulgarity for foreplay; it makes Hermione as dry as her meat-lacking skeleton. They have not fucked in so long, does he even miss it?

She ends her appraisal by peering into the bag. Turkey club from a local deli. She had made the mistake of ordering it more than once when they still got lunch together and he had decided that this must make it her favorite. He never bothered to ask her, seeking lazy conclusions, never doing any work. She is so tired of him and the cruel thoughts he inspires. It wasn't always like this, but he has worn her down like a crack in her skin slowly picked to a festering sore.

Her marriage is over, she thinks as she picks up the sandwich.

"Thank you," she says. "And how've you been? How's the store?"

"It's all good." It's always good, according to him. But George confided to her at the last Burrow Sunday dinner she attended that they had barely broken even for two quarters.

"Then why are you here?"

"Lunch with my wife? It used to be our thing."

"Get to the point, Ronald."

She sees a flash of anger in the flare of his nostrils, in the unappealing squinting of his eyes. He hates that tone she uses, tells her it's mean and arrogant to speak to her man like she does. Is he a man, she has almost spit out on more than one occasion. How are they together? How did they ever come to be?

She struggles to unearth those times when there had been fondness between them, friendship, passion and love. The detritus of their school years and in the rubble of war. Those early days of rebuilding when he had held her hand and it was enough to make her heart speed up. The first time he had laid with her, gentle and kind in his taking. She had not been his first but she had kept her gift for him, and he had looked at her as if he treasured it. Their wedding in the garden of the Burrow, his family's joy at making her officially one of them and the sense of security that brought since the loss of her parents. The safety of his arms on their wedding night. The day that Rose was born, screaming and ruddy pink, and he had cried as he held her. "Blimey, 'Mione," he said.

Blimey, she thinks.

"Have you read the _Prophet_ yet?"

"Not yet." And she should've known. She has not even glanced at her press briefings this morning, summaries dedicatedly made by Giles of any important articles that demand her attention. "Though I normally get more warning," she adds and this is directed at the man sitting before her. He knows how delicate her position is and she thought he had learned when to inform her in good time. Not the day it comes, not when the ink has already dried on the next impending storm to hit. "How bad is it, Ron?"

"Skeeter got hold of some rumors. Only rumors mind you, but it looks bad for the line of us still living together, the whole happy family public image."

"Have you spoken to the kids?" And she's not even looking at him, can no longer bring herself to. She is desperately searching through her pile of parchments. There it is in Gile's succinct hand:

 _Daily Prophet, page 2: Mr. Granger née Weasley kicked out of family home; sources deny continued claims of adultery_

How did this only make page two? And that snide bitch, Rita! Not only does it hurt Ron but damages Hermione's standing with male voters when he's referred to as Mr. Granger. (Not that she regrets keeping her name for one bloody second.)

"You only think to tell me this now?!" she yells, waving the parchment in his face, all her anger unfairly directed at him when her own distractedness is as much to blame. "You promised me that we could keep this from getting out. You were the one who insisted you couldn't stay at home, that you would be discreet. Ron, you promised! You know I don't need this now. We've got legislation coming up before the Wizengamot that they're going to fight me tooth and nail on. I don't need my family dragged through the mud; I don't need our failure used against me. And what about the kids? What about them? Ron, you promised!"

"'Mione, please—"

"Don't 'Mione me! Get out and fix this!" She throws her lunch at him. "And I hate this sandwich! I hate your stupid nickname for me! I hate how pathetic you are that I have to fix everything."

I hate you, she thinks.

He stands, crushing the paper bag in his oafish paws. "I'll deal with it, I—"

"Don't say you promise ever again! It means nothing to me." She stands too and points at the door. "Do something for once. Bloody prove it!"

* * *

She works late into the night and prepares not to sleep. She forgoes eating as before, save for a digestive biscuit with her tea. Her team are all focused on damage control. She releases a statement not about Ron but her new proposed bill: the Dark Artifacts Registration Act, now in its third draft and one of the most controversial initiatives since she gained office.

Harry pushed for it. In his weekly briefings to the Security Council, he revealed that the black market has been growing. With it has come unsubstantiated fears of a new insurgency and on this basis its popular with the general public. But opponents are afraid that the bill is merely a means to name and shame former Dark Lord sympathizers, an unsubtle government initiative to keep tabs on anyone who has dabbled in magic of even the slightest impure Light. And the Wizengamot is bitterly divided, sadly along familiarly stark bloodlines.

But it will do for a distraction.

She denies all Skeeter's requests for an interview. She calls in a favor with Padma Patil at the Prophet's politics desk, suggesting the bumping up of an article on the recent success of her wolfsbane subsidy levy.

All her efforts she knows now reek of desperation. And that's because she is desperate. Her estranged husband (for that's what he is) has unwittingly forced her hand. She must be focused. She must stay in control. But she is so tired and what she really wants to do is curl up under her desk and cry.

The owls are constant and even a couple of howlers too; she lets the interns deal with those. And then comes the first letter from her children, a brief note from Hugo:

 _Is it true, Mum?_

This is what's going to break me, she thinks. And these are just words written down. When I see his face, hear his voice, feel his arms wrap tight about me, don't expect me to keep it together then.

For now, she will. For now she is strong and in charge and if only she'd had more than one biscuit and a bite of turkey sandwich since lunch—

Hermione rises from her desk and faints fully to the ground.

* * *

She wakes up to Harry.

"You're in St. Mungo's," he says.

"Is Ron here?"

Harry scratches the back of his head. "Well, he knows."

"I think it's over between us." She's never said this out loud. Harry looks as surprised as she doesn't feel. "Do Rose and Hugo know?"

"That it's over?"

"That I'm okay. Tell them not to worry. Tell them I'm right as rain. That everything's fine with us. I'll speak with them when I'm not fighting fires that their father sets and leaves to spread all over…" Harry is glaring behind his glasses. "I swear I'm okay," she says.

"You sure about that?"

"What's the official line?"

"On you fainting? That you fainted."

"Great. They'll say I was stressed. They'll say it's because of Ron, that I'm too weak to lead—"

"Will you calm down? They'll say you need to eat a meal and you will eat a meal and then you'll feel better and they can go back to making up tales about Mr. Granger."

"Don't call him that."

"I was just trying to lighten the mood."

"It's too light," she says and rolls away from him on the bed, tugging the blankets up to her shoulders. "Turn off all the lights. I want to sleep now."

"You sure?"

"Give me a couple of hours."

"You got it." She hears Harry move and feels the press of a kiss to her temple. "Sweet dreams, Hermione."

And when she closes her eyes, finally a good one comes.

* * *

In the dream she is flying and the broomstick doesn't scare her. It feels secure under her as she drops and soars, laughing with her arms flung wide and the wind rushing by her. Her hair must be a tangled mess, but she doesn't care. This is freedom. This is—

Hands grip around her. Pale long hands about her waist. They are falling. He catches her. Lays her atop a bed, its four-poster frame made of polished dark wood and pure white sheets spread out beneath them. He looks down at her and smiles. "Hermione." Her dream prince. He is as young as when they were in school and she is too, the skin of her left arm unblemished.

"Hermione."

He kisses her. Her mouth and her neck and where her collarbones meet and the sensitive valley between her breasts.

"Hermione."

Lower. His tongue traces the underside of one mound of flesh. She feels it flick across a nipple. Lower, please.

"Hermione."

He is talking to her navel. Whispering words against her belly, filthy promises, epic poems. Please. Lower, please

"Hermione, wake up."

She opens her eyes, and the dream is over.

"Harry, what is it?"

He sits by her bedside, expression grave. Anxiety spikes inside her.

"Harry—?"

"It's Rose."

Reality drains back into a dream world after that. She is sliding out of her skin, out of her bed, renewed with strength as she slips her clothes back on. Magic thrums like warmed up blood. She is looking down on herself. Skinny limbs. Unspeakable mess of hair. Eyes wide and red and unconsciously blinking. But the fire is there. All the power she needs. Her daughter needs her.

Her daughter.

Rose.

"Something happened at school. A fight with another student. They brought her in. I don't know many more details yet. She's on the fifth floor."

The fifth floor. Charms and curses.

"What happened, Harry?"

The words are robotic to her. She does not wait for the elevator. Takes the stairs. Runs two at a time. Her wand hand twitches, feels painfully empty. If she could hurt someone, blow something up, such futile thoughts and dreams. For this is a dream, is it not?

"Is Ron coming? Is he—?"

"I had two men go to the store. He disappeared once he knew you woke up."

"You said he wasn't here."

"Not for long."

"Hugo! Is he okay?"

"He's fine. They're keeping him at Hogwarts. I sent a small detail over. This is my investigation now."

"Then it's a crime?"

Harry glances at her with hard, determined eyes.

They reach the fifth floor. She feels dizzy and tired, yet her heart is pumping fast and magic crackles at her fingers; it fizzes like static in her hair. My girl. My darling girl. You were mine first. You belong to me. Where are you? Let me see you!

Two aurors stand outside a door, along with a disconcertingly nervous Headmistress McGonagall.

"I want to see her!" Hermione says, and a brave medi-witch steps forward.

"Minister, they're working on her now. As soon as she's stable then—"

"No!"

Harry's arms come around her shoulders. He pulls her back against him as she fights with all she has to break free, to stand, simply to breathe.

"I need to see her," she begs with a sob.

"Minister," McGonagall says and her gaze flicks back to Harry, gesturing to a nearby waiting area where they can sit down.

But isn't she the one in charge? Why don't they defer to her? She is not a born leader, but anything can be taught and she is the greatest of students; she has learned how to be a parent and that was the hardest lesson of all.

Hermione doesn't remember being set in a chair. "Tell me," she says, staring blankly at a white wall. A clock ticks. There are posters for dragon pox vaccinations and a new spell that can test for Muggle ailments. There's a picture of a family, mother and father and two kids. A young boy sits on his father's shoulders. It that what illness is? This illusion?

"What happened?"

"Rose was heading between classes, along with Scorpius and Albus," McGonagall says. "From what we've been able to gather, they were cornered by some other students from Slytherin. It's unclear what their motive was, who was their target, but a very unusual hex was cast. Rose threw herself in front of Scorpius."

Stupid girl.

Harry and McGonagall only blink at her, and she realizes she has said the words out loud.

"But they can fix it?"

Harry reaches for her hand, and she snatches it back. "We still don't know."

There are voices in the corridor. Shouting, demanding. She recognizes them. Rushes towards them, Harry hot on her heels trying to drag her back, but she won't be stopped, not this time.

Scorpius is yelling at the aurors stationed outside Rose's room. They have him restrained by a rope-binding spell. Albus is at his side, trying to free him, yelling as well. Harry is already ahead of her, grabbing his son, pushing him back against a wall.

"Stay out of this, Al. Let them do their job."

"You don't know shit, dad! He'd never hurt her, he—"

"Let me see her! Just let me see her!"

Hermione steps closer, despite Harry's pleas that she stand back. The aurors stare at her warily, but she is looking at the boy that her daughter loves. His hair is disheveled and there are smears of blood on his face and on his shirt collar. His mouth is moving and saying his mantra over and over again: "Just let me see her!" There are tears on his cheeks, his beautiful eyes shining like molten metal.

"Release him," Hermione says.

The aurors turn to Harry.

"Don't look at him. I'm the fucking Minister. I gave you an order and you will release him. Now."

A second too reluctantly for her liking but eventually they do.

Scorpius drops to the ground, drags himself up from his knees. He looks at Hermione, opens his mouth to speak, but she is quicker. Her hand draws back and the slap echoes down the vast length of the corridor.

Scorpius' head snaps to the side from the impact. When he looks back, his face bears the broken expression of a chastised child, torn between hurt and remorseful. He looks so painfully young in that moment. He looks so painfully like his father, like the prince in her dream.

Hermione Granger has now struck two generations of Malfoys. Ron would be proud, she thinks. He would be if he was here for their daughter. But where is he? Where the bloody hell is he?

Her hand stings. No one is speaking or doing anything to help and the world is blurring in front of her. She cannot see. Just the silhouette of a tall silver-haired boy. She runs to him, wraps her arms around his chest and sobs into a familiar school jumper.

"I'm so sorry, Hermione," he says, and she feels him hold her back, hold her up, so warm and real, and he's all that she has to hold onto right now. "I'm sorry I couldn't save her. It should've been me."

* * *

Scorpius sits beside her in the waiting room. She doggedly holds his hand and he squeezes it back just as tightly. Across from them, Harry sits by his son. Albus has his arms crossed and his face folded into a scowl that eerily mirrors his father's. No one is speaking. McGonagall has excused herself to floo call her second in command back at Hogwarts. The clock ticks and the illusion of a happy family still smile from the poster of their Muggle ailment fun. The world is still turning. Are the necessary preparations being made? What is the preferred hour for when this living nightmare of an existence can stop?

Another figure arrives, four aurors set around him like the points of a compass. He is a tower at their center, the heart of a weather vane, the hand of a sundial.

The universe seems to orbit Draco Malfoy. After all, it is his first public outing since that rain-drenched day.

His eyes fall on his son then Hermione. "Scorpius," he says and the word is quiet yet commanding, orders clear in three mere syllables. The boy is rising from beside her and for a few moments the two remaining Malfoys disappear.

Hermione follows. She peers around the corner. She sees them stand several feet further down with the aurors posted around them. They still treat Malfoy like a threat, which seems unfair given the circumstances. She is a mess of lust and sympathy for him, of dawning frustration at the world's lack of progress. Why did they fight so hard? What was the point of all this? Can a wizard not be there for his child?

Draco's head is bent down. He still has a couple of inches on his son but he seems a giant in stature by the way they carry themselves now. Scorpius is slouched against the wall as Draco whispers something. Their eyes meet and Scorpius answers him, hands clenching into fists, the words harshly spit out. Draco nods with the slightest movement. He might not have moved at all. And then he is cupping his son's cheek.

Could Lucius have done something so tender? To offer physical comfort to his boy? To touch your child with the ease of affection. She thinks of Rose's freckled face. My girl. The tears are returning now. She has seen something too private, too close to the meat of her chest.

She returns back to Harry, saying nothing. Just wipes her eyes and sits and waits.

* * *

They cannot save her. She is not dying but they cannot undo what has been set into motion. An ancient magic rests inside her, one that does not obey modern spells, does not understand diagnostic or healing charms, does not behave like a curse that anyone can break.

Hermione sits by Rose's bedside. She eats because she has to. She sleeps only when her body can no longer stay upright. It only lasts for a few minutes, until her head droops too far and she stumbles to consciousness and is reminded why she is here.

Rose looks perfect. A sleeping beauty. There is no outer sign of the danger that lurks beneath her skin. The healers say maybe she can hear so Hermione speaks to her, tells her stupid things, begs and pleads that she fights, that she fixes this, that she comes back to her. She tells her to never risk her life for a boy again and then admits that the boy is a charming, handsome creature. "I would've liked him too," she says.

Scorpius sometimes visits, though Hermione rarely leaves. She stands to one side and watches as he takes Rose's hand and kisses her forehead. Once he is brave enough to kiss her on the lips.

It does not wake her, though a pathetic childish part of Hermione had considered the ludicrous idea. True love always woke the princess, could break any curse. But her daughter is not royalty but a half-blood. And the Malfoys are fallen kings.

Ron visited on the first day. And the third. It seems sporadic after that and it makes Hermione furious. It's not that he doesn't care; she can see how much this hurts him. But he is too afraid to deal with what has happened to their daughter. She can smell alcohol on him one time and cheap perfume on another. She vindictively tells him to come back when he can be a man. When he knows how to be a father.

He runs again but dubs her a spiteful bitch in his retreating.

Almost a week and nothing is changing. Hermione works from inside the hospital room, accepting owls and taking floo calls and editing the fourth draft of the Dark Artifacts Registration Act. The press has been abysmal. The attack on Rose has somehow become a damning commentary on the relationship problems of Minister and Mr. Granger. It gives Hermione so much guilt. For perhaps that is exactly what this is. Harry seems no further in his investigation. All the students involved only say they had it in for the Silver Trio. Petty rivalries and spite. How does a child even learn a powerful and ancient hex over that?

Actually, that's the sort of thing she might have done back in the day if she felt somebody had crossed her. She truly is a spiteful bitch. But that is not the case for her daughter.

There's a knock at the door, and that evening's auror peers around it. "Draco Malfoy wishes to see you, Minister."

Hermione stands. Wonders what a state her hair must be. "You can let him in."

He enters, and the auror follows behind him. His eyes plead with Hermione's and she realizes he wishes to speak with her alone. Hermione assures the young woman that she will call for her if needed.

"I'll be right outside the door, Minister," the auror says, studying Malfoy like she expects him to cast an Unforgivable as soon as she is gone.

"I assure you I'm unarmed," he says when they are finally without company. No wands during visiting hours. These are the rules, at least since St. Mungo's admitted the mysteriously hexed daughter of the Minister of Magic.

"How is she?" Malfoy keeps his distance, staying closest to the door. He is controlled and steady. His presence imbues in her an unexpected sense of comfort.

"No better," Hermione says.

"May I?"

She nods her permission, and Malfoy goes to Rose's side. His face is returned to its funeral mask façade now. But she can see in his eyes all the world.

One of his pianist's hands reaches down and long fingers rest upon Rose's forehead. He closes his eyes. "Do you trust me, Hermione?"

Her heart stutters at her name. Still, his eyes have not opened. "What do you mean?"

"I think I can help her."

"Think?"

He looks at her then, removing his hand and baring both palms to her. "I can help her," he says. "But it requires me taking her back to the Manor."

Why should she trust him now? This boy turned man who once taunted her viciously, who never understood her worth. What value does he see in the life of her daughter? Does he only mean to protect his son?

"You ask a lot of me," she says. "And I don't have much left to give. Why now? After everything?"

"Do you want to save her?"

"More than I can bear."

"Then do not let her suffer for my mistakes. You can punish me later."

Hermione looks to the closed door. She had cast a silencing spell as soon as it was shut (the Minister gets to keep her wand, at least). Now she locks it as well.

"When?" she says.

"Give me your wand, and I can apparate us there." He holds out a hand. "Tell me you trust me."

She clenches her wand tighter. There is a tipping point in her decision, the passage of a grain of sand that cannot be pushed back through its timer. It goes against everything she has learned. All her instincts are screaming. Must some things never change? But anything can. She can fly on a broomstick. She might fall, but he could catch her.

She looks into his sad eyes. "I trust you, Draco," she tells him. "But you will die by my hand if you fail her."

He takes her wand without comment then goes and lifts Rose off the bed. Her daughter looks so slight in his arms, reduced to the child that she still is. Her head rests on his shoulder, a blanket draped modestly around her. He's careful in his handling. It makes Hermione think of him as a father, how he must have been when Scorpius was small. Hands on and changing nappies. It's hard to imagine, but it fits.

"Hold onto me," he says and Hermione rests her hand on his left arm, close to his mark.

Their eyes meet and there's no mask between them. No history, nothing except the life of her daughter.

And that's worth everything, she thinks as she's sucked into the black vacuum of apparition.

* * *

The Manor at night is terrifying. They arrive in the hallway, lost in so much shadow that Hermione fears part of her person has been splinched. Artie appears soon after with a lantern, but his presence offers little soothing right then.

"We have guests," Malfoy tells him. "Miss Weasley will stay in the master chambers."

Artie only nods as he guides them up the stairs and to the left when they reach the library. Candles make the shadows darker. Even pitch blackness would be better than this contrast, where the light seems too bright and the dark feels like an abyss. But Malfoy knows where he is going. His steps are sure and he lets her hold onto his arm (she has not let go since the hospital) as he carries Rose to a room set back at the farthest corner of the wing.

They enter, and Hermione is blinded. Cream walls and porous drapes and a four-poster bed in dark polished wood and white sheets. Has she been here before? It feels like her dream, but she knows in reality she has never set foot in this place.

"You don't sleep here," she says.

"I used to." Malfoy sets Rose down on the bed and tucks her in until she is comfortable. "You can sleep here too."

This was your wife's room, she thinks. The room you shared with her. So no one shares it now.

"Thank you."

"Artie will stay with Rose. There is something I must show you."

He holds out his hand once more and this time she thinks that he means for her to take it. But in the candlelight, she sees he is returning her wand. "Would you like to send an owl?"

"If I tell anyone we're here, you'll be overrun. I don't want to risk it until you've done all you can for her."

"Very well," he agrees and strides from the room.

She rushes to keep up as he leads her out and into another stairwell set behind a hidden door. It is a servant passage, she realizes, though he is clearly accustomed to using it. It takes them all the way to the lower ground, and they emerge in what must be the dungeons. She blinks in unlit space, air cold and thick with damp against her lashes. Is he going to kill her?

"It's not what you think."

Candles burst into flame, illuminating every surface, every cranny. The wrought iron cell doors are all open, and she can see the contents of each room. Shelves of various artifacts and vials and jars and books upon books. There are several worktables bearing cauldrons and spoons and knives and other tools, some she has no idea what they are for. In one room there is a bed and a small table with a washbasin and a rail with shirts and trousers and robes. And yet another is filled with only words. She goes to this one first. Bits of parchment and paper are stuck to every inch of brick in the scrawl that she now knows.

What is she looking at?

"I sleep here," he says.

It looks like there must be little time for sleeping. She turns back to face him. "Why?"

"Do you know how my wife died?"

The papers only said that she had succumbed to a long illness. Astoria Malfoy was rarely seen in public, except at the start of the school year to see her son off to Hogwarts. Unlike her husband and child, she was graced with dark hair but had equally beautiful and delicate features. Too delicate. She had looked clearly gaunt on her last outing, the start of Scorpius' second year.

"The Greengrass family are cursed," Malfoy says. He stands in the center of his universe for the last three years, his hands stuffed consciously into his robe pockets and his eyes locked on a place behind her. "Not every generation and not Daphne, Astoria's sister," he goes on. "But she was not so lucky. I knew that when I married her."

"Then why…?"

"You thought it was arranged?" His eyes catch hers and read their judgment. "You would not be wrong. We were introduced and started dating. I was very much against the idea, tired of being forced into more useless obligations. And she was, too. She wasn't what I expected. I loved her first; it all happened rather quickly. Though it was harder for her to fall for me, I would not be deterred." And here his voice turns wistful. "I can be rather persistent in getting what I want."

He's not looking at Hermione now. He's not looking at anything that exists in this world. Another mask has fallen and he is seeing only the woman that he loved and Hermione is seeing how it was that he must have looked at her.

"What happened?" she says, wanting to cry at the devotion. She did not know it could exist. And it floors her that it should come from him. That he could make the love that she holds seem wanting and hollow.

"She told me before our engagement. She was already sick periodically, but there were certain remedies that could mask the symptoms. She feared she could not provide me with an heir, but it mattered not to me. We were married less than a year from our introduction. Scorpius came along four years later. It was a miracle. She had one early miscarriage before then and had taken months to recover. But somehow she fought to keep him. She stayed so strong. At the birth, I almost lost them both."

He has drifted into his bedroom cell and now sits on the lonely cot and stares at his hands.

"I knew she was dying after that. We were on borrowed time. My only hope was to find a way to break the curse. It's an ancient thing, something quiet and gradual, steeped deep inside the blood. I started to research before Scorpius could even walk. We lived in our little world, our perfect bubble. Mother and Father became concerned. Father was barely out of Azkaban, and his health never really recovered. We were all invalids in our way, Astoria sick by her curse, Father sick by his imprisonment, and me and Mother sick by our love and worry for them. Only Scorpius seemed unaffected. Do you know in only four years I lost all of them but him?"

Hermione remembers how terrified Scorpius had seemed back at the hospital. So much loss at such a young age. How it must have felt to think another person he loved would be taken away.

And she had hit him to release her own pain.

Hermione wraps her arms about her middle, struggling to stand with her shame. "Why are you telling me this?" she whispers.

He continues as if he has not even heard her. "I tried to save her. For all those years. And when it was too late, I knew that all our hope rested in our son. If the curse has been passed onto him… Scorpius is everything. He is all I have. And this is what I must do to protect him." He stands and gestures towards the cell of only words. Hermione slowly enters and she feels him stop behind her. "I am telling you this, Granger, because I see in your eyes that you would go to these lengths too."

Only half of the words she can see are in English (and half of those are unreadable by the sudden threat of tears). Yet all are written by him.

"At the start of all this," he says, "I knew French and could get by in Latin. But I have learned Aramaic and Ancient Greek and Sanskrit and even Mayan. I have learned to hear the silenced voices of the ancients. And they have told me many things. With what I know—"

Hermione spins around to face him. "You really can help her."

"Yes."

"Show me."

He undoes a cuff and rolls back the sleeve of his left arm. "My first experiment." He offers the limb to her; Hermione cradles it in her palms.

His forearm is long like the rest of him and threaded with sinew beneath pale skin. It feels weighty in her hands. It is the first time she has touched his flesh, and it surprises her how warm he is. But her focus is not on what she can feel but what she can see. As if she is touching somebody else, holding an anonymous amputated arm.

For where the mark should be, it is gone.

That is not to say that the skin is unblemished. It is puckered and ugly with scars, raised silver-white tissue thar twists over most of the surface. Hermione traces it with her fingers. It feels smooth and hard. Malfoy does not flinch.

"Does it hurt?" she says. Her voice sounds drowned out by her heartbeat.

But he still hears her. "No, not anymore. And there have been many other experiments since. I would show you my father's if he still lived. The skin looked like it had never been touched at all."

"Who else?"

He reclaims his arm and begins to roll back his sleeve. "Lots of former Death Eaters," he says, focusing on fastening the cuff. "Many did not cooperate. But I did not always ask for permission."

"And the artifacts you keep?" Hermione steps out if the cell to study the others. It looks like the black market must have been kept in business by him.

"Some are Dark. But ancient magic is something closer to gray." He comes to stand beside her, returned to his nonchalant yet graceful poise. "Will this be acknowledged in your new bill?"

"Would it stop you?"

"What do you think?"

She turns to look up at him. "That I don't care how many lives you took, how many laws you broke; I'm glad for all of it if we can save my daughter. But Draco?" She sees a vulnerability unbidden by the use of his name. "Tell me honestly. Why would you take such a risk for her?"

"I care for her."

"Why?"

He tears his gaze from her, heading towards a nearby worktable. "We must not waste time. I will show you the ritual."

* * *

A blood curse means bloodletting. Malfoy gives up his own and Hermione does too. An intricate potion is brewed with ingredients that are exceptionally rare and mostly illegal. Malfoy reads instructions from a scroll that looks like hieroglyphics. He is meticulous, and Hermione thinks that Snape would be inordinately proud of his former pupil. She is too. She feels in awe of him. She wants to learn from his research and immerse herself in such wonder. The modern Wizarding World has become too ignorant of the ancient ways, fearing everything old must be Dark. But there is so much wisdom that has been forgotten. He shows her the wand work that will be necessary for the final casting. They work seamlessly together. He seems buoyed by her being such a quick and eager study, happy finally to have someone to share all this with and who can appreciate the depth of his learning.

She would never think that the boy she knew at Hogwarts could be capable like this. But love changes people. A child changes everything. Her heart is not hollow, for just like his, it pumps ruthlessness as a bright hot blood through her body, stirred whenever it comes to keeping her family safe.

"It's time," he says. The necessary preparations are over; the preferred hour draws near.

He lets her pour the potion into a diamond cut vial, the only substance strong and pure enough to keep the concoction stable. He goes to the cell that is his bedroom and she watches as he splashes his face with water and rinses his hands up to his elbows. The scar on his exposed forearm seems to glisten before being covered by a roughly dragged towel.

"Would you like to wash up too?" he says.

"I can wait."

Water drips from a lock across his forehead, which he self-consciously brushes away. "Please forgive my vanity." Hermione thinks no apologies are needed. "I did not mean to keep Rose waiting."

He takes her back up to the West wing via the main stairwell. When they emerge into the hallway at the entrance to the dungeon, they pass a woman's portrait. There is no time to observe for long but Hermione could swear she sees a swaddled baby in her arms. The strange image is soon forgotten, and they reach the second floor leading back to the master chambers. Rose looks like Sleeping Beauty once more, even more so in this bedroom. Artie sits in a chair at her side, reading a picture book out loud.

"I's hopes you don't mind, Master," he says.

"That was very thoughtful." Hermione smiles at the elf. "She used to love that book."

Malfoy is only staring at Rose. How many times had he stood here and watched his wife as she faded away in this bed? How hard this must be and yet he does this for her, for her daughter. This is more than a life debt, Hermione thinks. Like her wand, she would give all her magic to him. He could take anything.

Artie leaves as they take the final steps. Hermione strokes Rose's hair and kisses her cheeks before administering the potion. Then she moves back and begins the wand work. Malfoy is somewhere behind her. She can hear the ancient words in his low voice. Something similar to Coptic but belonging to the wizards of old Egypt, he explained earlier.

A blue light shines from the tip of Hermione's wand. It shines from between Rose's lips. It grows and the light stretches out from mouth to wand until it joins together in a jagged cobalt streak. Rose lifts from the bed; her body jerks.

"Hold steady," Malfoy says and slips back seamlessly into verse again, repeating the incantation. The light pulls on Hermione's wand. The magic is being drawn from her, but something is leaving her daughter too.

"Is it working?"

Malfoy stands behind her. His hands cover her own, and she feels her magic strengthen with his. They are working together, channeling all they have into her wand, drawing this curse out as one being. She is caught against his chest, feeling the cadence of his breathing while he speaks. Rose is surrounded by blue now; she is floating. Her darling girl. Hermione can do this. She will not let her daughter be taken.

The light grows; it fills the room, and with a final crack, she is thrown, tumbling into darkness.

* * *

Hermione wakes to voices.

The room is bathed in sunlight. She can see down to the individual stitches of the floral embroidery designs on the canopy ceiling. When she turns her head, Rose is sitting up beside her. But Rose isn't looking at her. She is speaking to someone else. A gentle rumble sounds. Is that laughter? What on earth did Rose say to make Draco Malfoy laugh?

"What time is it?" she mumbles.

"Mum?"

And then she is buried in red curls and wrapped up in thin toned arms. Her daughter squeezes her tightly. It was worth everything for this.

"You should have eaten first!" Rose chides.

"What are you talking about?"

Rose pulls back and helps her sit up. Hermione is tucked beneath the sheets in the same wrinkled outfit she was wearing yesterday. Rose is now clad an ivory nightgown, definitely not hospital issue. Did it belong to Astoria? Hermione leans forward to look at Malfoy beside the bed.

He is clearly showered and changed back into his usual dress robes. Sitting with legs crossed and a cup of tea balanced on one knee, he reveals all the subtle tells of a smile when he's finally able to see her.

She blinks back at him. There is likely no etiquette for this. Once enemies, they have morphed into something new, devoid of definition. She will never forget what he has done. She still has no idea what he feels or what his real motives are.

His face relaxes as if the hints of warmth never existed. "You were exhausted," he says. "Since your fainting episode. Probably not the best state for you to do what we did, though I don't expect I'd have talked you out of it."

You talked me into it, she thinks, but she's beyond complaining. "How long was I out for?"

"Close to eight hours."

She does feel well rested. Rose is bouncing beside her. "You guys are such rebels."

"You don't know the half of it," Hermione says, trying to squash a groaning pang of hunger in her stomach. As if heralded by the sound, Artie appears with a tray of croissants and fresh fruit and a large French press. Hermione grabs for a croissant first, tearing the pastry between greedy fingers. "Suppose I should tell them where I am," she says while chewing.

Abominable table manners notwithstanding (and there are crumbs now scattered on the bed), Malfoy is unperturbed. "I expect them to be here shortly," he says, calmly sipping his tea. "Someone just tried to breach the outer wards. I'd say we have less than thirty minutes until Potter is here to arrest me."

"Kill you," Hermione amends.

He frowns. "I was trying not to worry your daughter."

"Don't let them, mum! He saved me!"

"Hush! I know that." She strokes her daughter's cheek, relishing in the luxury again. She has her back. You gave that to me. "And don't you dare forget that I saved you too." She kisses Rose's scrunched up nose. "Also, absolutely no more throwing yourself in front of Scorpius."

"Agreed," Malfoy says. His expression remains measuredly blank at her uncensored displays of affection. "Though I've already thanked her for that."

"I'd do it again." Rose is adamant.

"Bloody Gryffindors!" Hermione mutters and she can hear the sound of bone china rattling. Glancing at Malfoy, she sees a pianist hand held to his lips, his eyes sparkling with suppressed mirth.

* * *

The first person to arrive at the gates baying for Malfoy blood is not Harry Potter.

Ron is futilely throwing his weight against the bars and casting spells that spark and fizzle to no effect. Malfoy offers to go out to meet him, but this is Hermione's battle. Rose wants to go too, and maybe her presence might help to calm the fool down.

A worried father is not a fool, she scolds herself. Why is she mad at him already? And doesn't he have every right to be? Guilt swirls like the hot black coffee in her stomach. But guilt is not the same as remorse. She will never regret any of the choices that she's made.

Mother and daughter step out the front door hand in hand. Ron stills when he sees them and, from somewhere inside, Malfoy takes that moment to open the gates.

"Rosie!" Ron runs towards them. "I missed you, kiddo! Don't scare me like that!"

He wraps his daughter in a bear hug that lifts her feet off the ground. "Hi dad," she says, returning the embrace.

"You okay?" He holds her face and tilts it side to side, checking for damage, then seemingly satisfied, he wraps an arm around her. "You ready to get out of here?"

"Wait," Hermione says.

"I wasn't talking to you."

"But I'm not ready—"

"I wasn't asking, Rosie."

"Mum?"

"Let her go, Ron."

Ron glares but acquiesces, moving away from Rose so he can focus his ire fully on Hermione. "Who the fuck do you think you are?" he spits, and flecks of saliva land on her face.

"Go inside," she says to Rose, her eyes never leaving her supposed spouse. This fight is a long time coming, but she'll be damned if her daughter has to see them at their worst right after almost dying. "I'll be okay. Me and your dad have to talk."

"You heard your mother," Ron says. He won't stop looking at Hermione either.

Rose huffs and folds her arms, glaring with the same Weasley petulance, but eventually she obeys. The doors close behind her. Ron steps closer into Hermione's space. He towers over her. She used to find his size a source of comfort, something that made her feel safe. Now it is purely for intimidation. But she is not afraid.

"You should have spoken to me," he says softly.

"I would if you were there."

"I have a fucking say!" His arms go up with his voice, and he starts pacing angrily. "You don't get to make these decisions on your own when it comes to our kids. And not about this. How could you bring her to here of all places?"

"Would you rather her be dead? I did what needed to be done. Someone has to—"

"You never gave me a chance! You've never let me!" He points at her to punctuate his words, finger thrusting with enough violence that it almost stabs her chest. "Always thinking that you know better, like my opinion counts for shit. Do you know what you're like to live with? It's like going to fucking work. Why do you think I quit the Ministry? I'm not one of your anointed little helpers. I'm not one of your kids. You never once treated me like I was a husband to you. We were supposed to be partners."

"You selfish prick!" She shoves him for all she's worth; he doesn't move. "Do you think I didn't want that? I was desperate for it! But you're so self-absorbed, so bloody needy and insecure." She's crying, whether out of rage or frustration or the sudden overwhelming grief that everything between them is truly over. "You can't handle the slightest dint to your ego. You make me apologize for being clever, for having ambition, for being more successful than you. And still I had to do everything." It's not fair, she thinks, rubbing her eyes with clenched fists, turning away from him and taking over the part of agitated pacer. "I was always responsible for the kids. Dressing them and feeding them. Taking them to playdates and parties. Who do you think bought all the presents and wrote all the cards? And do you know how boring those things are? How could you since you never went! You think teaching them quidditch and how to ride brooms makes you Father of the bloody Year? I made our home, I kept it running and I still run the country. But I know you expect a fucking award for the first sign of basic competence. Well good luck to you! I'm still waiting for you to show any!"

"You set me up to fail," Ron says, his whole body deflated. She has sucked all the life from him, punctured every last bit of masculine pride with a thousand tiny cuts.

But she doesn't feel sorry. She meant every word she said.

"Ronald Weasley, you have never even tried to succeed. I know you are capable, but you always give up at the first sign of trouble." That might have been more like a machete to a barely healed old wound. "I think I even know when the affairs first started, right after I became Minister, right?"

"'Mione—"

"Don't even try to deny it. You couldn't tear me down for my career so you had to make me feel like a failure as a woman. I'm not even jealous. But it still hurts me. Being told I'm too skinny. That I have no sex appeal. Well you're no treat either. I stopped being attracted to you a long time ago."

He folds his arms and surveys her. "Are you sleeping with Malfoy?" he says, as if all the terrible truths she's just told him add up to this most inane (and insane) of conclusions.

"You really are dumb as fuck," she says. "And you've lost the right to even ask me that question."

Large hands grasp her shoulders, and she feels herself thrown back against the door. "Did you risk the life of our daughter for a sad little revenge fuck?"

"Let me go!"

He shakes her so hard, her head bangs against the wood. "You're such a bloody hypocrite, d'you know that? Think I'm such an idiot that you can lie to me as well? You don't give a shit about me." He's crying as he hurts her. "You don't let me in, never did. And then you use our child?" His hands are moving from her shoulders to her throat. "I wanted to kill you when I heard where you'd gone."

"Are you going to kill me now?" she says.

Before he can answer, the door swings open behind them. Hermione feels herself stumble backwards out of Ron's grip, but her fall is broken by strong arms and a hard solid form.

"I think you should go now," Malfoy says. His voice is quiet, though the threat is loud beneath the surface. His hands stay on her shoulders and it makes her stand straighter, incongruously and defiantly tall.

Ron hunches forward, his hands fisted at his sides. "This is between me and my wife," he growls.

Malfoy moves to place his body between them. "Then say what needs to be said while I'm here. I won't let you lay your hands on her."

"Are you really that lonely?" Ron sneers.

"Dad, shut up!"

Rose has rejoined them. She clings to Hermione's arm as they both stand behind Malfoy.

"I want a divorce," Hermione says, and the words burst forth like a breath she's been holding for too long. Her voice stutters. Her body's trembling.

Ron blinks. He stares between his wife and his daughter, or as best as he can see them with a protective dragon blocking his way. "Pathetic!" he yells. "Just cos your wife is dead, you think you can steal mine?"

"Did you hear what I just—?" Hermione tries, but Ron interrupts with a venomous, "You can have her!"

His face is thrust right into Malfoy's when he does. With a discreet raise of his wand, Malfoy casts Ron down the front steps. "You are no longer welcome here," he says, voice restrained yet deadly. He follows after the now sprawled out Ron, levitating him up so he can hear his parting words. "I will not keep your wife or daughter from you; that is entirely up to them. But if you return to my home, do not expect my mercy. I only wish that you could understand what it is you're giving up."

With that Ron is tossed beyond the gates. They slam shut as he continues yelling. But Malfoy ignores him. He steps back inside to find Hermione hugging Rose.

"I am sorry to treat your father so unkindly," he says. "But I have my limits. Do not think his behavior means that he loves you any less. He just hates me that much more now."

Rose turns in Hermione's hold to survey him, not saying anything. Instead she runs from her mother to Draco and throws her arms around him. He pats her hair tentatively as she sobs into his chest.

"Are you okay?" he says to Hermione from over the top of Rose's head.

"Couldn't be better. But I should really call Harry." She takes a step forward, but her body will no longer cooperate. Legs giving way, she sinks to the cold marble floor.

"You don't have to be okay," a voice tells her. A hand rests on her shoulder, and she pictures a funeral pyre and a father offering comfort to his son. Hermione takes the hand. When she weeps over the boy she first loved, even the dead can hear it.

* * *

She and Rose are restored by a Calming Draught brewed by Malfoy himself. He gives her access to his owl and finally the creature has a name. Talos struts on his perch when they find him, apparently insulted by a lack of attention. According to Malfoy, Hermione's treats and ministrations have ruined him for good.

Still, he leaves with Hermione's parchment after a final ear scratch. And the response soon comes from Harry that he already knows where they are. Yet there has been no heroic rescue mission. No mass auror invasion of the Manor. No one-way ticket for Malfoy to Azkaban.

(As it turns out, Draco owled him first.)

Hermione returns with Rose back to St. Mungo's. They apparate into her room, which appears untouched since they left it. Somehow Hermione's locking charm is still in effect. Well, she always knew she cast powerful magic. And apparently Harry had warded it. He flings the door open while she's trying to get her and Rose out.

"I can explain—" she begins but Harry is hugging her tightly and hugging Rose as well and he's dragging them both back into a world of chaos.

"Don't explain; just fix this!"

Aurors and Ministry aides fill the corridor. They have taken over the whole floor, Harry tells them. "I've had to obliviate all the patients on this ward and a good chunk of the staff." Rose's room was put into lockdown, and they've miraculously prevented anyone outside of the hospital from knowing that the Minister of Magic went AWOL. Now silence descends and everyone looks simultaneously petrified, staring at the woman before them like she's the reincarnation of Voldemort himself.

"Giles!" Her trusty aide weaves his way through the maze of human statues. Thank goodness someone can still maintain dignity under pressure. "You and Harry come with me. And someone fetch a healer to examine Rose."

Everyone startles into action and it feels like she is back in her offices, back in her element, back to herself after emerging from an Imperius curse. It shouldn't have taken Rose's near death experience for her to do something about all the problems in her life, but she thinks it might not have been possible without Draco Malfoy. She's going to have to do something about him. After all, he's revealed himself as the reason for the Dark Artifacts Registration Act.

"I'm going to arrest him," Harry says, once they've commandeered the room next to Rose's.

"You can't!"

"I can. He asked me to."

"He didn't tell me that."

"Because he knows and I know that you'll try and bury your own legislation out of a pathological sense of doing what you think is right. You're going to risk your reputation and career."

"I'm not throwing Malfoy under the bus to look good."

"It's about more than that. The other students who attacked Rose? Turns out Hogwarts is still about as safe as it was in our day. They found a ring possibly owned by Salazar Slytherin himself. Thought Scorpius Malfoy seemed like the ideal guinea pig."

"His own house really wanted to hurt him like that? Why did it take you so long to find it?"

"Slytherins! They have their own sort of omerta. I had to send Bones in until we got the truth out."

Susan Bones has made a name for herself as Harry's most effective interrogator. Hermione only knows this based on reputation alone, Harry having insisted that as Minister of Magic it was better that she never saw how far the Hufflepuff would go.

"Anyway," Harry says, "enough people in the Ministry now know that a dark artifact almost killed the Minister's daughter. They're not going to want to bury your precious act any time soon."

"God bloody damn it."

"Yeah. So, whether it passes next session or not, I do have to arrest Malfoy for the treasure trove he's got holed up at home. It's like a Dark Magic Smithsonian from what he tells me."

"I can't believe he told you."

"He did it for you, you know. If he gives himself up, the bill becomes moot and you don't lose any face. No one bar a few people here really know what you did when you left here with Rose."

Hermione raises a knowing eyebrow. "Ron does," she says, but Harry meets her gaze with stony eyes.

"What was I supposed to tell him?"

"He thinks I'm sleeping with Malfoy."

Harry takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. "And what did you expect, Hermione?"

"You know he's been cheating."

"I had my suspicions."

Stupid divided Potter loyalties. She sighs. "And you know I'm not sleeping with Malfoy. We were saving my daughter."

"What happened when you saw him? Ron, I mean."

"I asked for a divorce." She's not going to horrify Harry with all the gory details of what occurred. Instead Hermione has a thought. It's cold and cynical and ruthless, but it's exactly what she needs to do to get everything she wants. "I know how I can fix this."

"How? I really hate when you get that look in your eye."

"What look is that?"

"Like you're going to break every rule and somehow still get away with it."

"I know deep down Harry Potter that you love that look. After all, it's what kept you alive."

* * *

Later that day, after Rose is discharged with a clear bill of health and safely holed away back at Hogwarts (the students involved in her attack have all been suspended, though who knows how many more Dark artifacts remain undiscovered), Hermione arranges an exclusive interview with Rita Skeeter.

They meet back in her ministry office, the notorious journalist, along with the rest of the media, none the wiser as to her prolonged absence from St. Mungo's. Hermione showered in a hospital bathroom and had an assistant bring her a fresh set of robes. She ate a three-course lunch at Rose's bedside before escorting her daughter to the floo, where McGonagall waited to meet her. Scorpius had somehow been allowed to come too. Rose flew into his arms, and their reunion was both incredibly sweet and horribly bittersweet for Hermione.

She spends thirty minutes with Skeeter and the next six hours corresponding with Malfoy and Harry and sympathetic contacts on the Wizengamot. She even makes time to speak to her lawyer. It's not really a British thing, but in her mind she imagines sending a howler to inform Ron YOU GOT SERVED!

In the morning, Skeeter's exclusive interview is front page news: MINISTER AND HUSBAND TO DIVORCE. At least Ron is saved from the indignity of being called Mr. Granger for a final time. Hermione cites "irreconcilable differences" because it's true and it's nobody else's business what the reality of the adultery rumors actually is. If she's honest with herself, Ron's cheating is not the only reason. If anything, it was a symptom and the two of them were the cause. They really were never very good together. She hopes he can find happiness with someone not so easily disappointed. With low expectations at least. At best, a warm bed that can satisfy him. He can do what he wants now. The only hard part is going to be how to deal with the kids.

She writes to Rose and Hugo individually. She knows she needs to make time for her youngest. She and Rose already talked back at the hospital. Surprisingly, Rose was more than okay with her parents' split. "I've got eyes. You don't make each other happy." That's one way of putting it. And Rose knows now what finding happiness with a partner truly means. The stark difference with Scorpius has proven that her parents' relationship could never succeed. More worryingly, Rose asked what Hermione thought of Draco. That's none of her daughter's business and a potential minefield of continental proportions.

Not that she hasn't thought about him indecently often, mind you.

The still waters still run deep and it feels like she's only dipped her toe in, even with his heartbreaking confession about his family and their night spent breaking a curse with their magic intimately entwined. Does she really know him? Who actually is he? He feels like an entirely new person, a veritable stranger compared to the boy she went to school with.

That morning, over her second breakfast (she has rediscovered an appetite, as well as spare minutes to eat), Talos returns with a particularly impatient tap at her window. She lets him in, and he dives straight for the crumbs of a hastily eaten muffin left on her desktop. By the time she has a treat to give him, he is more than displeased.

"Greedy, impatient, rude and ridiculous," she says. She scratches his right ear (she has learned that this is his favorite), and he purrs. "You're forgiven. Hand it over then."

The scroll bears the Malfoy seal and—she can almost convince herself—the vague scent of the Manor. Did he write this in the library, she wonders. Her schoolgirl brain is putting Wizarding Britain on a lower rung of importance than an infamous former Death Eater. They should be throwing her into Azkaban. It doesn't matter; she hardly cares. Just let her finish reading his letter first.

 _Hermione—_

Yes!

 _I live in the futile hope that you have not done what I think you have (though Potter would not deny it). Commiserations on the official end of your marriage. A shrewd political move, given the circumstances. Father always said you would have made a formidable Slytherin. Still I can see no impediment to the passage of your latest bill, and I will gladly hand over everything, including myself, to the Ministry whenever the time is right. Potter is in agreement. And the sky is green and grass is purple. Do you see what you have done?_

 _Please give my warmest regards to Rose. The house is noticeably emptier following her brief but memorable presence. I have permanently returned to my chambers, and it is a comfort to me now. You and your daughter have given me a great many gifts already. I ask for nothing more. Only the most minor of favours._

 _Whatever happens to me, please look out for my boy._

 _Yours eternally,_

 _Draco_

Idiot! She is going to kill Harry. After she kills Draco. After she kills this godforsaken bill. What is the point to it? What is to be gained except for ruining the life of a man whose existence is already unconscionably tragic. And to ruin the life of his son! The boy has no one left. She will not allow it. She will do what she must. The one thing she never thought herself capable of:

She will complete a task deliberately badly.

She rewrites the fourth draft of the bill as a draconian (and Merlin please excuse that pun and then Avada her for it) and incomprehensible bureaucratic quagmire of legislation. Let the Wizengamot have at it. Let them have at her. She will get Harry to let go of that bone she knows he's been sucking to the marrow since learning of Malfoy's Dark artifacts collection. And then she will give Draco Malfoy a piece of her mind (and possibly any other piece of her person that he might express the slightest interest in).

It takes a few days. The press remains focused on all the salacious details of the Minister's divorce. Ron isn't helping by playing the wounded husband and garnering the sympathies of insecure wizards the country over. But she will take it since it allows Padma's article on the rejection of the Dark Artifacts Registration Act to sneak in on the third page.

Harry is livid. She can deal with that. But it seems Draco has returned to wearing his funeral mask, and that is much harder to take.

* * *

With her misguided Gryffindor courage, she shows up outside the gates of Malfoy Manor on a Saturday night. No one knows she is here; there are aurors still stationed outside her family home. She's wearing a Muggle dress and three-inch heels that pinch her toes. Her hair is less than its usual disaster, and her face bears more than the normal minimal make-up. She might be making an effort, but she felt pleased when she stared in the mirror. She has already gained a small amount of weight, and the haunted look she once carried seems to have floated away with the owl that took her divorce papers. She feels a new woman, and she wants Draco Malfoy to know that and to thank him for it.

It is Artie who greets her at the doorstep.

"Is the Master in?" she says.

"He is being in the library, Minister. He is not being prepared for guests." No time for the necessary preparations, she knows.

"Could you ask if I may see him?"

Artie pops away, and Hermione lets herself cross the threshold. She looks to the top of the grand staircase and waits for the doors to open, for him to welcome her into that most sensual of places.

What she would give to see his library again.

The door eventually moves and he emerges, dressed in only a white shirt and black slacks. His sleeves are rolled up and an open book rests in the palm of his left hand. She can see his scar. She can see his collarbones through the unbuttoned collar of his shirt and his Adam's apple move as he swallows. He has a wonderfully long and elegant throat.

"Granger."

"I should have owled first."

"Did you dress up for me?"

"Yes."

He blinks only once at her candor. "You best come in. Have you eaten? I can have Artie throw together something."

"I would like that," she says.

He waits for her to climb the stairs and then holds the door open to the library. The light is low and the room cast in muted orange from a few strategically lit candles and a roaring fire to the right. Hermione is drawn towards it. She sits down on a sofa, the opposite side from where she can see that Draco must have been. He lowers himself back into the singular indentations of the cushions, closes his book and studies her.

"You've been busy," he says.

"Well, I am Minister of Magic—"

"Tell me, Granger, and be honest, what do you hope to achieve?"

Her courage is starting to fail her. His mask is as cold and impenetrable as ever, and he doesn't look away from her. Hermione's eyes fall to her lap.

"Honestly, I wanted to see you. I wanted to see… to see whatever it is that there may be between us."

"Beyond friendship?" he says quietly.

"Yes."

She forces her head up to meet his eyes once more, but she does not expect to find that his mask has melted away so quickly.

"I cannot offer you that."

"Why not?" she blurts out then covers her mouth with her hands.

He smiles fondly at her. "You make it very tempting. But I do not have it in me to feel this way again. My heart is…" He turns to the fire. "You remember me as I was at school, I'm sure: a sniveling, wretched and cowardly boy. I made many mistakes. In fact, nearly all of my decisions leading up to and through the war were universally terrible. I am not a good man nor a strong one. But marrying Astoria was the first thing in my life that I knew I had got right."

"I'm sorry," she says and tears are streaming down her face at the fire-lit visage of his profile. It is a stunningly beautiful face, all the more so for the heady emotions in his eyes and the long-held memories he is recalling.

"Please don't apologize. It is incredibly flattering. If our lives had been different—"

"I wouldn't even be here. Your wife would still live and you'd be happy."

"And you'd be unhappy, wouldn't you?"

"I was always unhappy."

"Were things so bad at home?"

She rubs at her eyes and she must be smudging her make-up. When she sniffles, a monogramed handkerchief appears floating before her. "It wasn't all bad." The cotton smells like him. She can tell after she loudly blows her nose. "Ron and I, we worked as friends. And we love our children. But I'm not sure what we ever had in common besides Harry and fighting a war. I made him hate me; I'm not easy company, I know. But when I hear you talk about her… no one has ever loved me like that."

"Come here," Malfoy says.

He holds his arm out to her and she crawls across the sofa to his side, curling up against him as he clasps her shoulders firm. This close, his scent is overpowering. She breathes him in, absorbs all the warmth he can give, memorizes the sound and the rhythm of his heartbeat. I could die here, she thinks. No other moment has felt so perfect and painful all at once. What a fool she is. What on earth was she expecting?

"I think you're wrong, you know," she whispers.

"How so?"

"You are a good man. And you changed for the better. Don't give Astoria all the credit. It was also you, Draco. You have a strength and courage that overwhelms me. What you did, what you still do for your family. I'm sure it's what she fell in love with. I think I'm falling for it too."

"You shouldn't have said that."

"You deserve to know."

"I find you an extraordinary woman, Hermione. If I had met you in a different life—"

"Don't finish that thought. Please."

Everything between them feels like an unfinished thought. And yet the sense of an end is near.

"What can I tell you?" he says and it sounds almost like he is begging.

"Have you heard from Scorpius?"

"He's well."

"And he's doing okay at school?"

"In the academic sense?"

"No."

"Admittedly, he has been burdened by a disadvantage since he started. Bullied quite frequently by his own house as much as the rest of the school. That is a guilt I will carry to my grave, to have him tainted by my sins. But he carries it all with the grace of his mother. Al has been a good friend to him and Rose is—"

"Al? You know Albus?"

"Not so well. But I like him a great deal. He's nothing like Potter, despite looking like an unscarred version of him."

"It really is strange. Harry said he'd never met Scorpius."

"I never pried, though Al did mention certain differences of opinion. I assured him it's quite natural for sons and fathers to disagree."

"Harry will hate this."

"Why?"

"To be getting such great parenting advice from you."

He laughs, and she stores it away like an untapped pensieve. "I guess I got another thing right."

"You did. Scorpius is amazing. I couldn't be happier for Rose, and she loves him so much. If he needs anything, you know you can ask me. I'm so sorry that I slapped him. I guess he told you."

"Yes. And I assured him it was a Malfoy rite of passage."

"Ha!" Now she is laughing, burying her face into his chest. He hugs her tighter too.

"Do you think," she wonders and she can feel his fingers trace the bare skin of a shoulder, "maybe with time there might be a preferred hour, after all necessary preparations have been made, where we could be together?"

"I…" His hand stills. "I don't want to be cruel."

"I promise I can be patient." She pulls back so she can see his face. "Even if it never comes to be, you're a gift, Draco Malfoy. You gave me something I never knew I needed, a push to change my life around. And you gave my daughter back to me. I think I'd wait forever if I could."

"Hermione."

"Please can I kiss you?" The way he's looking at her, she's not going to take no for an answer.

She rises on her knees and takes his face between her hands. His eyes flutter closed at the contact. The last time he's been touched like this was by a dead woman, the only woman he's loved. He's not been kissed in over three years. How would that feel? Can she ever be enough?

She keeps her eyes open as she leans forward. She wants to memorize his face, the way he seems not to breathe as his mouth parts minutely.

"You can tell me to stop," she murmurs, but she doesn't want him to. Even if he is thinking of someone else, she will always remember that this kiss was with him.

Their mouths touch, and his lips part further. He exhales a warm breath inside her, and he's stirring her to life once more.

And just maybe she is stirring him too.

She feels his arms come tight around her as he deepens the kiss. Her leg shifts and she straddles him, fingers tearing through his hair as she strokes her tongue against his. He makes a pained and happy moan that she echoes. She grinds her hips down and raises him to a satisfying hardness. He needs this as much as her, needs love and caresses and to feel the world turn and still stay good, despite all the hardship and losses and the constant tragedy that they have woven into a second skin.

She works on his shirt buttons as he stands and lays her down before the fire. The flames reflect in his eyes, but there's liquid silver as well, all the heat that he's buried inside him, buried like his wife and his parents, another person who has been lost. I'll bring you back, she thinks. I am a champion of lost causes. And she spreads her thighs to welcome him, hips lifting as he pushes her skirt up, rips her knickers past her knees, bends down and tastes her like a newly discovered delicacy.

Lower, please. Oh gods, she needs this. Needs him. Needs to feel like she recalls a woman should.

"He didn't make me feel beautiful," she confesses and it's bloody selfish to bring up but so is getting oral from a still grieving widower. "Never like this."

"Your husband—"

"Ex-husband."

Draco sits up with a smirk, the one she knows from childhood, a clear sheen glistening on his lips. "Your ex-husband is an affront to all civilized society. I held back because Rose was there." He leans down, dragging with him the top of her dress to access her breasts. "I should have killed him, bruised him at least. To take something so precious," and here his mouth sucks on a nipple, "and handle it like a crude animal. I've never been more offended. I wanted to break his hands when he touched you. That he doesn't see your worth, that exquisite mind you wield like a weapon. I should want to explore it. Explore everything."

She thinks she's going to come from his words alone. But when she does, it's from his fingers. And twice more from his dick.

He collapses still inside her, his body a delicious weight that she clings to, feeling his panting breaths against her neck, stroking his hair as she whispers that she's got him. He holds her back and rolls over so her head ends up pillowed against him. They lie by the fire saying nothing for several minutes. She doesn't know if she has convinced him to try for her or if she's never going to see him again. And she's too scared to ask what this might mean tomorrow, if she was just a distraction, if the preferred hour will never come.

At least, he gave her this.

One hand toys with her tangled mane as she traces the lines of scars across his chest. Harry nearly killed him; she'd forgotten that part of their history. And what if Draco had died? Thank Merlin that he's another boy who lived.

"I didn't force you?" she says uncertainly.

"What?"

"Was this okay? Did you want this?"

"Granger." He tugs on her curls almost painfully. "I should think my actions made explicitly clear that you had my full consent."

"And you don't regret it?"

"Do you ever stop thinking?"

"I thought you liked that about me."

His arms wrap around her and it's the safest she's ever been. "Just one of many things."

* * *

Draco transfigures his shirt into a blanket and they fall asleep where they are, the crackling of flames gradually dwindling down with the diminuendo of a lullaby. It is Hermione who wakes first. Draco's arms are relaxed enough that she can slip out of his embrace. She fixes her clothes then allows herself the indulgence of watching him sleep. At some point during the night Artie must have left a tray of food. Hermione sits on the sofa while she picks at it, never straying from her watching. It's like studying a work of art, she thinks. All the subtleties to be discovered upon each viewing, the opportunity for a plethora of interpretation.

And you have gone through many periods, she thinks. What do you call this? Neo-Malfoyism? Post-fucking-Granger?

She smiles as she licks her fingers, stands and fully stretches. It is still night outside and she can only see by candlelight. She wanders and, for several minutes, is satisfied to peruse the shelves and catalog any interesting titles she might ask to borrow later. Eventually a different curiosity strikes. Draco is still sleeping. (Did she exhaust him? She can't help but blush rather smugly at that.)

Silently, she lets herself out of the library and tiptoes downstairs. There is something bugging her, a half-glanced image that demands further investigation. She is overstepping boundaries, taking risks, possibly breaking unspoken rules. But none of those things have ever stopped her before. And this is too important. A piece of a puzzle that she might finally make fit.

She stops by the doorway that she now knows leads down to the dungeons. To its left hangs a large portrait in an ornate gilded frame.

Astoria Malfoy blinks down at her, adjusting the pink bundle that she cradles in her lap.

"Minister Granger," the portrait says.

Hermione pulls on the skirt of her dress, striving to achieve a more modest length. She's barefoot with no underwear on, and she knows that her hair must look unambiguously ravished. She resists the urge to run her fingers through it, instead clasping her hands securely behind her back.

"Mrs. Malfoy," she says politely.

"Call me Tori." This Hermione did not expect. The portrait smiles. The paint of her green eyes somehow seems to sparkle with the expression. It's the same smile as Scorpius', Hermione realizes. And a similar voice to Daphne from what she remembers at school. But more melodic maybe? It's hard not to romanticize the captivating vision that she sees.

"I'm sorry to disturb you."

"I'm not. Draco's told me so many things, I wanted to meet you immediately. Though he's rather too protective of me. And quite afraid of what he thinks I'm going to say."

"He talks to you?"

"At least daily."

"That's… sweet."

"It's more for him than me, as I'm sure you can imagine. But he keeps me abreast of all Scorpius' exploits. Speaking of which, I was so glad to finally meet your daughter."

"You met Rose?"

"That first weekend she came to stay. At Scorpius' insistence, of course. She's a wonderful girl, you must be so proud."

"I am."

"And she's fully recovered, yes?"

"Yes, she is."

"Such a terrible thing. I know Scorpius feels responsible. Says being girlfriend to a Malfoy is as good as painting a target on your back. It never bothered me, but then we weren't together in school. Children can be so cruel." She adjusts the bundle in her arms; from within the pink blanket, the hand of a baby wriggles out. "Not this one," she says softly, staring down at the infant.

"Who is she?" Hermione says, but she already knows the devastating answer.

"We called her Lyra. The instrument of Orpheus, able to charm even an inanimate object. But her star only shone very briefly. I was grateful for every second."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. Do you know how many perfect moments I had? Draco gave me those. And I hope he can find more."

"Me too."

"Do you think you can do that for him?"

"If he'll let me."

"I think he will. So much has changed very quickly. Perhaps the time is almost right."

* * *

Draco finds her sitting at the base of the stairs. It feels like she's been crying for hours, but it can't be longer that a few minutes. It's cathartic at least, and she thinks she might be ready to face him. He sits down beside her, staying quiet and contemplative.

"Are you sure you're not having regrets?" he says after several moments.

"Quite the opposite. It's like I'm grieving for something I might never have. This dream of you that's become real and it's more than I could've possibly imagined. I want it badly. I want to be the one to give you your smile back, to make you laugh, to guard your heart." _I just want to be with the boy I love. "_ Do you think I'm horribly selfish?"

"What's selfish about that? It's rather lovely, really," he says and reaches for her hand. "Hermione." His thumbs are massaging her knuckles. "You asked me for time, but I think that you need to give yourself time too."

"I told you I could be—"

"Yes, I know. But it's still wrong for you to wait for me."

"Draco, what are you doing?"

"Trying to be honorable," he says, now caressing the length of her fingers. "You deserve more than this; do you understand? You deserve someone who loves you enough that they would burn down the world for you."

So do you, she thinks but says, "And that isn't you?"

"How do you burn the world down twice?" She is crying once more as he raises her hand to his lips. "I am the one who is selfish. If I keep you, I'm no better than the boy I was at school."

"But you don't hate my blood."

He kisses from her palm to her wrist. "Not any part." And his mouth hovers over the scar that she keeps glamored. "You're the one who's much too pure for the ruined likes of me."

* * *

He offers her a guest room for the night, but she feels done; the dream is over and the clock has struck midnight (it's four in the morning) and any spell that they cast has been reversed. He follows her to the gates when she runs barefoot, no shoe left to drop or slipper to lose. The gravel cuts into the skin of her soles, and she welcomes the pain. She can see him watching, unmasked fully as she apparates away.

She returns home without her aurors ever knowing the tectonic shifts that have taken place. She cries beneath the shower, but there's no water left by the time that she lies naked in her bed. She has drank too much from the well; she has reached the bottom of the lake. Her fingers trace her body, finding all the places that his mouth did, that his callous pianist hands have played to such perfection. All the scars of her years, her history that he claims no longer repulses him.

In the end, they are both ghosts, she thinks. Dead, hopeless, empty things still clinging to honor yet never at peace. Lost because loss removes your compass. You find new ways to guide you. Quests to end ancient curses. Missions to run the Wizarding World. A world that still turns with or without you. What is the point and who are they really?

She doesn't know what's true anymore, not in her own mind and what might be in his. It is easy to go back to work and slip into her role of Minister and mother. Ex-wife she thinks she must be made for. She will give her love to her children. She will bury and keep her heart for the dream of a prince who refuses to exist.

Rose doesn't mention Draco, her sweet intuitive girl sensing that the moment has passed. She brings Scorpius back for a visit during the holidays, and he's hard to look at but easy to love. Hermione resolves that she will be there for him. No one deserves to be punished for the sins of the father.

And it is three months until she sees the father again. The Dark Artifacts Registration Act is forgotten. Mealtimes have been neglected too. No one comments on her haunted appearance. Most assume it is because Ron has gone public with a new witch fifteen years his junior. All so predictable and pitiable; they leave her to her work.

"Minister?" Giles appears at her office door. "Draco Malfoy would like to see you."

She has cut her hair short to just above her shoulders. She opts for slacks over dresses and skirts and flat utilitarian shoes. Her desk is a forest of parchments and used coffee cups. She is not prepared for visitors, but she wears no façade.

"Let him in."

He enters in robes that are fresh, but his face is wan as moonlight. Shadows stalk the planes so that it's like looking at a skeleton. The ghost of Malfoy Manor, she thinks.

"Granger."

"That's Minister Granger to you."

"Can I take you to lunch?"

"I'm not hungry."

"You look starving."

"So do you."

He offers her a bouquet of flowers, which she does not accept. He places it down amongst the parchments and stale coffee then takes a seat before her.

"This won't do," he says.

"No. Turns out I'm not very patient."

"And I have no honor, just my selfish genes. I had to see you."

"So here I am."

"Here you are." He reaches for the flowers. "I tried to make a statement. In pureblood tradition, every bouquet should have meaning. So let me start with the first." He pulls out a pale bloom and lays it atop the scroll she's not been reading for the last two hours. "The white chrysanthemums are for truth. You asked me why I saved your daughter. The truth is because I lost my own."

"Astoria told me," she says.

"She thinks that I'm in love with you."

She picks up the cutting and plucks off a petal. "Are you?"

"Yes." He does not wait for her response. "Hence the kennedia for your delectable mind and sweet alyssum to symbolize that you have worth beyond beauty. Milkvetch means your presence softens my pains. I have been in great pain since you left me. And asphodel for regret, my darling Hermione." He tosses each flower down like a declaration until no bouquet is left. She's staring at the eclectic and haphazard arrangement, the colors starting to blur when he says, "Is it too late for me to burn down this world for you?"

"It's three o'clock," she says.

"And you've still not eaten?"

"No."

"Then the time is right."

"I suppose it is."

He stands and holds his hand out to her. "I took the liberty of making reservations."

She moves around her desk and returns the gesture, her body drawn to his. His long skilful fingers wipe her tears, and she laughs as he tilts her head to trail kisses along her jaw and nose and cheeks. "Slytherins," she says, but oh how she's hungry for this, for him, forever. "Of course you bloody well did."

* * *

Fear not, my friend, and step up to the gates of Malfoy Manor. For there are more than ghosts to greet you now.

Wait soon for the gates to part and go up to meet the old house elf, who will lead you into the fire-warmed hallway. Should you venture right into the East wing, you might see a silver-haired boy chasing a girl with flaming red curls like a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Intrepid wanderer, do follow, and you will pass the smiling faces of the boy's grandparents as they make their way to dance and play in the what they like to call the Mischief Room. Conversations are loud and the sounds that echo are all joyful.

Turn left into the East wing and you will find the bedrooms are well-used. The young master's shrine to quidditch remains but has matured, with Muggle books and photographs joining the fray; the red-headed girl features often. The once designated nursery has been refashioned into a guest room painted a dusty rose in honor of its most usual guest. And if you make it as far as the current master chambers, you will find that the light, inviting space is now disrupted by evermore books and discarded clothes. There is no time to stop and stare and linger on the past.

Do not be shy. Come greet the old mistress' portrait. She will see you down to the dungeons where the newly liberated prisoners are. A man and a woman working side by side, creating new potions, testing old artifacts, cataloging forgotten worlds, the potential of so many spells lost throughout history. Notes are scattered across the walls in competing hands, and voices are often raised, always challenging and laughing. A place of discovery, of thoughts that will not be allowed to stay half-finished.

But come to the final place, when the necessary preparations have been made, at what is the preferred hour.

For in those quiet times, the no-longer ghost and his most determined lady will retreat to the heart of the house at the top of the stairs and sit in the sanctuary of their most sacred space.

Happy now? Then let us leave them to their lives. For even the inhabitants of Malfoy Manor deserve a moment that is theirs and theirs alone.


End file.
